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Get ready for a painful experience! I saw this back in 1980 and it was awful then and it fares no better 25 years later. I just taped it this week ( Sundance had it this month too ) and had to break it up into segements over a couple days to get through it. This has to be one of the least interesting films ever made by an ego maniac. There is no story at all, just a premise. Barris stars, wrote & directed and even warbles the pathetic song that turns up a couple times in the film. The best part of the flick is the bits from the original GONG SHOW, but they are edited so tightly they fail to have much impact. Several sequences are so bad you cannot understand why they were included, but then again, almost no effort went into this and they had to fill up 90 minutes somehow.

I was 16 when this was in the theaters and it was the first movie I ever walked out on (I have to remind myself that I fell ASLEEP during Star Wars and walked out on it on a second try several years later). Even to an eager teen this was pretty awful.

Was the Sundance print uncut? I watched THE GONG SHOW MOVIE last night on the Canadian Bravo! channel but it was edited for television, so no Popsicle Twins while Jaye P. Morgan's flashes her breasts off camera.

Was the Sundance print uncut? I watched THE GONG SHOW MOVIE last night on the Canadian Bravo! channel but it was edited for television, so no Popsicle Twins while Jaye P. Morgan's flashes her breasts off camera.

The version shown on Sundance had a clip of the Popsicle Twins as well as Jaye P. Morgan's breasts - and I use that term loosely(saying "he breasts" is actually pretty appropriate in this instance). Kitten Natividad's nearly-nude performance seemed intact as well. But even with those bits and brief moments from Phil Hartman, Danny DeVito, and Taylor Negron - I had to fight the urge to scoop out my eyes with a melon baller to insure I never have to see it again.

This post has been edited by Christopher Lupold on Apr 24 2006, 07:24 AM

The host and creator of TV's highly successful GONG SHOW, Barris is on top of the game show universe. He seems to have it all, but there's a down side: constant battles with the network via Douglas (sort of a kinder, gentler version of PRIVATE PARTS' "Pig Vomit"), high-stress tapings of five shows at a time and virtually non-stop unsolicited public auditions. Eventually wife Altman gets fed up and walks out, adding to his cumulative stress. It's enough to make a man want to get away from it all, and Barris does---via a one way ticket to Morocco and the "world's biggest desert".

1980 brought not one, but two variations on Fellini's 8 1/2, with Barris' far less cinematic GONG SHOW MOVIE beating Woody Allen's STARDUST MEMORIES to theatres by four months. Legendary game show producer Barris was directing a film for the first (and only) time, but ceded little control in bringing his most famous creation to the big screen. In addition to appearing in every scene, Barris cast real life wife Altman (her only imdb credit), executive produced, co-scripted (with PUTNEY SWOPE auteur Robert Downey Sr.) and composed the soundtrack for THE GONG SHOW MOVIE.

Okay, for his MOVIE, Chuckie Baby wore almost as many hats behind the camera as he did in front of it, but this isn't the ego trip critics claimed it was. Over the course of ninety minutes Barris is insulted numerous times, misidentified, physically assaulted and even literally pissed on. He doles the biggest laughs out to his supporting cast (the best sight gag: The Unknown Comic's bedroom). The TV magnate cheekily kept his GONG SHOW unpolished and unprofessional, and it appears Barris' intent was to preserve those same qualities for the feature version, not to stake some claim to filmmaking genius. Wife Altman and daughter Della are both just as uncomfortable in front of the camera as the man himself.

This is not to say that being purposely slapdash makes THE GONG SHOW MOVIE some kind of lost subversive classic--just that it doesn't quite deserve the outright savaging reviewers gave it. Certainly it was gonged for the wrong reason. My best guess is that the original idea was Barris and Downey teaming up to satirize the high-pressure showbiz world of films like ALL THAT JAZZ (as Barris' TV productions had done to various game show subgenres). However, the man without the filmmaking experience had (or took) total creative control, and the result seems more like one long montage periodically interrupted by a few minutes of plot. Kind of like ROCKY IV, only far less pretentious.

Speaking of the frequent montages: not the collection of the show's greatest hits that you might anticipate. Instead, you get the greatest misses---the acts that were then too raunchy for prime time, almost all including nudity or profanity. The editing of the bits also should have been much better. For example, the infamous Popsicle Twins (reportedly missed by the entire West Coast the first time) get less than ten seconds while other less notable (and G-rated) acts make it to the gonging. A better mixture might have made the videotaped Show footage more accessible for the uninitiated, but it is still fun spotting familiar faces like Kitten Natividad, Robert Romanus, Tony Randall and Vincent Schiavelli. And if you're wondering if you'll finally see Jaye P. Morgan's boobs: you do, and while they are real, I'll stop short of the other half of the famous SEINFELD quote.

Universal never allowed Andy Kaufman to realize his dream of bringing THE TONY CLIFTON STORY to the big screen at the peak of his popularity, but they spent $6 million bankrolling Chuck Barris two years past his. Go figure. Oh well, Barris courted audience rejection almost as brazenly as Kaufman, and while GONG SHOW MOVIE couldn't match the legendary Clifton screenplay in sheer surrealism, it did have its mind-bending moments. Not to mention more solid laughs than you'd expect underneath the wreckage. In it's own way, THE GONG SHOW MOVIE defies criticism: made exclusively for fans of Barris and the show and more likely to bewilder newcomers than convert them. But really, critics, come on. "Worst Movie of All Time?" Hell, it wasn't even the worst movie released during that month (May 1980) IMO: that honor has to go to G.O.R.P.*.

So....why isn't this on DVD yet?

As noted above, GONG SHOW's moment had passed by the time this feature-length version hit the big screen. The show had been off NBC for nearly two years, and the syndicated version was only a few months from cancellation. Barris' small screen knockoffs (THE $1.98 BEAUTY SHOW, THE CHUCK BARRIS RAH RAH SHOW) had all come and long gone. GONG SHOW MOVIE was every bit as timely when it was released as COOL AS ICE and premiered to similar critical and commercial reception, and Universal quickly pulled it. And, as I mentioned a time or two, it is terribly made. Intentionally, no doubt, but still terribly made.

Why it should be on DVD:

The show that Barris (THE DATING GAME and THE NEWLYWED GAME are his other, more durable hits as producer) is still best known for has maintained its cult following for 35 years now, and even picked up new fans during the past decade with GSN airing reruns and CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND becoming a well-received feature courtesy of director George Clooney. Barris, who wrote Freddy Cannon's hit "Palisades Park" in his pre-TV days, concocted the tunes himself. They're actually kinda catchy, especially the showstopping "Don't Get Up". Since Chuckie Baby wrote 'em all, music rights shouldn't be an issue.

Of course, it's possible that Barris himself would rather just forget about this venture. Assuming he doesn't, this one would likely find its audience, and a commentary with the man himself and Downey Sr. would be one a must-listen if there ever was one. A DVD release would also be a great excuse to include a complete GONG SHOW episode or two as extras. What gives on this one, Universal? Inquiring dangerous minds want to know.

THE $1.98 BEAUTY SHOW--there's a flashback for you! If the Universal Vault Series were to bring out THE GONG SHOW MOVIE and Marty Feldman's career-killing IN GOD WE TRU$T my head might explode. Hey, THE NUDE BOMB and THE ISLAND, also from 1980, got released. C'mon, Universal, let all those dogs out!

THE $1.98 BEAUTY SHOW--there's a flashback for you! If the Universal Vault Series were to bring out THE GONG SHOW MOVIE and Marty Feldman's career-killing IN GOD WE TRU$T my head might explode. Hey, THE NUDE BOMB and THE ISLAND, also from 1980, got released. C'mon, Universal, let all those dogs out!

THE GONG SHOW MOVIE is scheduled for one airing on HBOC-W in January. It is, accoding to my cable magazine, scheduled for January 8th at 4:25 AM, PST. I have no idea if this will be the uncut version or not, but I would presume it to be uncut.

It looked spiffy in HD. 8 1/2 indeed but a very meta-movie, one that looks very today, given the interweaving of documentary elements and the blurring between the real and the reel. You can feel co-writer Robert Downey's hand in it. It would make a good co-feature with Woody Allen's STARDUST MEMORIES, which it anticipated by a few months.

On its own steam, though, it's not very good, and anyone coming in cold will be baffled. You had to be there. By the time it came out the phenomenon had faded, and it assumes you were already in the know about the program, with no eye toward posterity. There are some funny bits, however, amidst the Barris-written songs and general self-indulgence, and the final, desert-shot number, "Don't Get Up," is almost poignant with its freakshow ensemble. I wonder if music rights, rather than its quality, has kept it off home video?

The Wikipedia entry on THE GONG SHOW has some interesting info about it. Mare Winningham was a contestant. And Gene Gene the Dancing Machine later lost his legs to diabetes, sad to say.